In Search of Lost Time, Volume III_ The Guermantes Way - Marcel Proust [131]
But having laid down this principle she proceeded at once to violate it by criticising Saint-Loup’s choice.
“All the same, don’t you know, it’s amazing to me that people can find any attraction in a ridiculous person.”
Bloch, hearing Saint-Loup’s name mentioned and gathering that he was in Paris, began to slander him so outrageously that everybody was shocked. He was beginning to nourish hatreds, and one felt that he would stop at nothing to gratify them. Having established the principle that he himself was of great moral integrity and that the sort of people who frequented La Boulie (a sporting club which he supposed to be highly fashionable) deserved penal servitude, he regarded every injury he could do to them as praiseworthy. He once went so far as to threaten to bring a lawsuit against one of his La Boulie friends. In the course of the trial he proposed to give certain evidence which would be entirely false, though the defendant would be unable to disprove it. In this way Bloch (who never in fact put his plan into action) counted on tormenting and alarming him still further. What harm could there be in that, since the man he sought to injure was a man who was interested only in fashion, a La Boulie man, and against people like that any weapon was justified, especially in the hands of a saint such as Bloch himself?
“I say, though, what about Swann?” objected M. d’Argencourt, who having at last succeeded in grasping the point of his cousin’s remarks, was impressed by their shrewdness and was racking his brains for instances of men who had fallen in love with women in whom he himself would have seen no attraction.
“Oh, but Swann’s case was quite different,” the Duchess protested. “It was a great surprise, I admit, because she was a bit of an idiot, but she was never ridiculous, and she was at one time pretty.”
“Pooh!” muttered Mme de Villeparisis.
“You didn’t find her pretty? Surely, she had some charming points, very fine eyes, good hair, and she used to dress and still dresses wonderfully. Nowadays, I quite agree, she’s unspeakable, but she has been a lovely woman in her time. Not that that made me any less sorry when Charles married her, because it was so unnecessary.”
The Duchess had not intended to say anything out of the common, but as M. d’Argencourt began to laugh she repeated these last words—either because she thought them amusing or because she thought it nice of him to laugh—and looked up at him with a caressing smile, to add the enchantment of her femininity to that of her wit. She went on:
“Yes, really, it wasn’t worth the trouble, was it? Still, after all, she did have some charm and I can quite understand why people might fall for her, but if you saw Robert’s young lady, I assure you you’d simply die laughing. Oh, I know somebody’s going to quote Augier at me: ‘What matters the bottle so long as one gets drunk?’14 Well, Robert may have got drunk all right, but he certainly hasn’t shown much taste in his choice of a bottle! First of all, would you believe it, she actually expected me to fit up a staircase right in the middle of my drawing-room. Oh, a mere nothing—what?—and she announced that she was going to lie flat on her stomach on the steps. And then, if you’d heard the things she recited! I only remember one scene, but I’m sure nobody could imagine anything like it: it was called The Seven Princesses.”
“Seven Princesses! Dear, dear, what a snob she must be!” cried M. d’Argencourt. “But, wait a minute, why, I know the whole play. The author sent a copy to the King, who couldn’t understand a word of it and called on me to explain it to him.”
“It isn’t, by